Tom Andrews (1961–2001) was born and grew up in West Virginia.
He graduated from Hope College and earned his M.F.A. at the University
of Virginia. In his lifetime, Andrews published three books of
poems and a memoir,
Codeine Diary, about his coming to terms with his hemophilia
and his determined refusal to let it circumscribe his life. He
also edited two collections of essays, The Point Where All
Things Meet: Essays on Charles Wright and On William
Stafford: The Worth of Local Things. In 2002, Oberlin
College Press published Random
Symmetries: The Collected Poems of Tom Andrews, a posthumous
volume comprised of two previously published
books of poetry, The Brother's Country and The Hemophiliac's
Motorcycle, two unpublished manuscripts, 25 Short Films
About Poetry and
The Temptation of Saint Augustine, and two late uncollected
poems. Charles Wright wrote of Andrews, "The leaves just
burst from his fingers. He had that odd stance to the world and
its language that made whatever he wrote seem new and undiscovered,
like treasure hauled up into the sealight from the ocean floor."

How to Love the World: Remembering Tom Andrews
an essay by Jack Ridl

He always signed his letters, “Dumb ole Tom.”

When Tom was a junior at Hope College, he was in a play writing
class. One day I mentioned to him that I thought he might like
to try his hand at writing poems. He was surprised. “I’ve
never written a poem in my life,” he said. He thought it
over. Then he said, “What would you recommend I do to learn
how?” I told him that over the summer he should take an
anthology of contemporary American poets and choose 25-30 of
them and write a poem in the manner of each. He said, “Ok.” That
fall when he showed them to me, I was dumbfounded. It was as
if each of these poets he’d selected had written their
next poem. It was uncanny. It was the stuff of prodigy. “Now
what should I do?” he said matter-of-factly as if what
he did was what anyone could do. “Well, now all you have
to do is compose your own poems,” was all I could think
to answer. He enrolled in Introduction to Poetry writing. We’d
talk for hours after class. During that fall term, Tom and I
went to Kalamazoo College to a reading by Gwendolyn Brooks and
David Young. Young was the editor of the prestigious literary
magazine FIELD at Oberlin College. Half way through the reading,
I asked Tom if he’d be interested to going to Oberlin to
be an intern at FIELD if David took interns from outside the
college. Tom whispered an enthusiastic, “Wow! Yeah!” After
the reading, I asked David if he’d be willing to take a
student from another college as an intern. He said no; they’d
never do that. I said, “If I sent you poems by this student,
would you be willing to say no again?” and I laughed. And
David laughed, too, and said, “Yes, I’ll say no again.
Send them to me.” I sent them to him. He called and said, “Send
Tom Andrews here for the second semester.” Oberlin is one
of the colleges that annually awards a student one of the prestigious
prizes from The Academy of American Poets. Tom won it. The Oberlin
students all agreed that he deserved it. Tom graduated Summa
Cum Laude from Hope College and won the Hoyns Fellowship to the
University of Virginia where he studied with Charles Wright and
Gregory Orr. After that, he went on to become the brilliant writer
he was, published in the finest of places and winning critical
acclaim and prestigious awards for individual poems, as well
as for his collections and for his prose memoir and for his edited
editions of definitive work on William Stafford and Charles Wright.

Hope graduate and founder/editor of Dirty Goat Press, Barry
Hendges wrote to me soon after Tom’s passing, “Barely
knowing him, I feel a great sense of loss. I remember when I
was a freshman or sophomore at Hope going to a Hope football
game with my roommate at the time and seeing Tom and turning
to my roommate and saying, ‘Hey look, that’s Tom
Andrews, the poet.’ I guess Tom was a bit of a rock star/celebrity
to me. I think Tom heard me; I remember he gave a shy little
amused smile. That was Tom Andrews, the poet.”

Tom’s temple was inclusive. Two of his favorite poets
were William Stafford and John Ashbery. Now, in the poetry world
these two are seldom if ever mentioned in the same admiring conversation.
Tom could gently convince you in about thirty seconds that they
were nearly exactly alike. He was right, of course. Tom would
watch a British drama on PBS and then switch to ESPN for the
latest NASCAR updates. He would carry around Wittgenstein’s
philosophy, a catalogue for motorcycle parts, and Mad Magazine.
He’d work for the most esoteric of all the mathematics
journals, Math Reviews and then go play pick-up basketball. He’d
come into the house performing a new yo-yo trick and while doing
so, ask if I’d seen the poems Marianne Boruch had just
published. St. Augustine and the Marx Brothers were religious
figures to him. He had the lightest touch with the heaviest material
of anyone I’ve known. He could juggle.

Tom Andrews was once a champion motor cross driver. However,
he found out that he had hemophilia. “I then retired,” he
said. “A hemophiliac motor cross racer is somewhat of an
insurance risk.” He held the record for continuous hand
clapping for which he was published in the Guinness Book of World
Records. He won the Iowa Prize and the highly prestigious Rome
Fellowship and wanted to be a stand-up comedian. His work was
selected for The National Poetry Series and he was awarded a
Guggenheim. He edited the Opus at Hope College and was a fellow
dreamer of a visiting writers series. We dedicate this year’s
series to him. His poems were selected for Best American Poetry
and he’d just as soon write for a motorcycle magazine.
His publications include “Hymning the Kanawha”(Haw
River Books), “The Brother’s Country” (winner
of The National Poetry Series, Persea Books), “The Hemophiliac’s
Motorcycle” (Winner of the Iowa Prize, University of Iowa
Press), the memoir “Codeine Diary” (Little Brown), “On
William Stafford: The Worth of Local Things” (University
of Michigan Press) and “On Charles Wright: The Point Where
All Things Meet” (Oberlin College Press). He was amazing.
While at Hope College, he published in OPUS and in The Wallace
Stevens Journal. Tom could do a handstand on a skateboard that
was sitting on another skateboard while rolling downhill. Yes,
he was amazing.

Guy Davenport, one of this country’s most powerful critics
wrote of Tom’s poetry: These are not poems about illness.
They are about the dominion of the spirit when it is rich in
imagination and courage.